While opponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) will welcome its likely demise, we would prefer our governments had rejected the deal as bad for their peoples. Instead, it is likely to be sunk by a new US president whose racism, sexism, tax avoidance and defence of fossil fuels are anathema and will be a barrier to achieving progressive alternatives.  

Behind that vote is a backlash against these kinds of deals from ordinary people who feel alienated and disempowered, just as we saw with Brexit. That aspect of the Trump victory needs to be listened to by our government and others who have pushed the TPPA and similar deals, including the ongoing negotiations for the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA).

Clearly the Prime Minister has been talking to people in Washington and has written off the prospects of the TPPA happening “in the short term”. 

This was not how it was meant to play out. The Obama administration had everything ready to roll to put the implementing legislation for the TPPA to a vote in the next few weeks during the lame duck period of Congress, and seemed unconcerned that passing such a momentous law by one or two votes in the current climate would further undermine the legitimacy of such deals.

It is still possible they would try. But to do so in the face of the landslide vote for Trump, and for enough Republicans to endorse the legislation, would be hugely provocative when the talk is of healing and unity.

Even if Congress did pass the legislation there are further steps in the ratification process before the TPPA could come into force and those would require Trump’s willingness to proceed.

All the other participating countries, except New Zealand and Japan, have waited to see what happened in the US before adopting their own implementing legislation. The lower house of the Japanese Diet is about to vote, but the bill still has to go through the upper house.

Here, the National government cast prudence aside and pushed through the implementing legislation, which may have its final reading in Parliament today. 

I presume it has also been making invisible changes to policies, practices and administration, for example for Pharmac, that don’t require legislation. We know that US officials have been telling our government what they consider we need to do.

For our government pass the legislation and make other changes, when no other TPPA country has done so, makes New Zealand look out of touch and desperate. Given the Prime Minister’s concession, the government should withdraw the legislation and reverse all the other changes it has been making to implement a deal that is unlikely come into force. It is time we took on board the message from the US and UK, and had a real debate about the kinds of international agreements that are genuinely good for our future.

IN THE LARGEST EVER LEAK of documents from a ‘trade’ negotiation, Wikileaks has posted a raft of texts and documents tabled in the Trade in Services Agreement negotiations. The topics range from finance, post and transport to professional services and domestic regulation.

‘This leak sends a resounding message to countries that are determined to negotiate TISA in the shadows of the World Trade Organisation’, said trade in services expert Professor Jane Kelsey from the University of Auckland.

‘The 24 parties, including New Zealand, have tried to shroud this deal in even more secrecy than the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA). Documents are to remain secret until 5 years after the agreement comes into force or negotiations are formally terminated. That’s clearly not going to happen.’

There is a stocktaking meeting in Geneva early July. Professor Kelsey urged the parties to revoke their secrecy pact and resolve to release all the documents, as some TISA countries have begun to do unilaterally.

Among the leaks are updates on financial services and e-commerce texts that were first posted last year. According to Professor Kelsey, they confirm that the world’s most powerful services exporters, acting on behalf of their corporations, refuse to learn any lessons from the global financial crisis and want instead to intensify the risks from barely regulated cross border finance.

‘The e-commerce chapter remains equally worrying’, Professor Kelsey said. ‘They could limit or even prevent governments from requiring firms to hold data locally, and allow them to choose to store it offshore in countries with minimal privacy protection and intrusive spying laws’.

New Zealand’s role stands starkly exposed, most notably by the domestic regulation text. Having failed to get WTO members to agree to extreme neoliberal ‘disciplines’ that require them to adopt light-handed and risk-tolerant approaches to regulation, it is pushing this aggressively through TISA.

‘That failed model brought us finance company collapses, leaky buildings, the Pike River mining disaster, elder-abuse in our rest homes’, Kelsey said. 

‘The National government recklessly locked New Zealand governments into this model through the free trade deal with South Korea. Now it wants to bind all the other TISA governments to do the same. If the government has its way, this extreme position will ultimately end up being imposed on the entire 160 members of the WTO, including some of the world’s most vulnerable countries.’

‘Just as growing numbers of New Zealanders have challenged the back door dealings in the TPPA, they need to send the same message over TISA and any other secret negotiation over which we have no say.’

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